This is a personal journal documenting my studies in art - mainly just a place to keep notes and to organize my thoughts better than I could in a handwritten journal (you can't do a search in a paper journal, or post live links). My ultimate goal is oil painting, but I want to start with developing my grasp of the basics in drawing.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Mignola and Nord

I did a recent post in which I said my holy trinity of artists have one thing in common - they're masters of figure painting and anatomy. I need to add to that - because they have a couple other things in common as well, and these guys are right in there with them.

Design, Simplicity, Style.

None of them generally render out detailed backgrounds, or anything unnecessary at all really. Just a powerful composition, a few figures (some only partially rendered at times), a clear narrative and clear action. The vast majority of artists - including almost all of the crappy ones - have a tendency to think they need to render everything out in complete detail. In fact they seem often to put an inordinate amount of work into utterly unimportant things while leaving the important things out, or paying them scant attention.

One thing I notice about all of them (my favorites that is - not crappy artists) - when they render anatomy it doesn't interfere or make the pose look static. It enhances the figure, the gesture.

I suppose they're all masters of the graphic elements of design. They know exactly what's important, they get that just right, and let everything else fade away.

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About Me

Dark Matter - we can't see it, we can't detect it, and yet it needs to be there in order for the universe to behave the way it does. Of course it's only one of many unproven theories, but here's what it means to me -- Sometimes the most important things are those we can't understand or quantify; that which remains mysterious in this modern world dominated by rational materialism.